Mug shoot

One of the few perks of getting arrested is being photographed. Or it should be. Unfortunately, many of the creative people working within the criminal justice system exist on the fringes of the artistic community. It’s why the work of courtroom sketch artists is rarely seen anywhere else. No in the New Yorker and not in the pages of a middling college quarterly.

But sketches are an accepted medium. Mugshots, with their awful lighting and bland background, have little to no artistic value. Why isn’t there a movement to welcome professional photographers into the pre-trial fold?

Most things have gotten better over the years. Food, medical care, transportation. But when you look at mugshots from a century ago they have a certain indescribable charm. Perhaps it's the black and white, or maybe it was the fact the person behind the camera had respect for the subject and their craft. Whichever it was, it shows. At some point in the 90s, the mass production and the ballooning of prisons led to boring conformity. You could see it in the faces. They began to blend together. The individual appeal was lost. Frankly, the same thing has happened at the movies. Here though, we have no superheroes to save us. 

The arrested ought to look their best before their day in court. Innocent until proven guilty pales in comparison to ugly until proven attractive. This can only happen with the keen eye and expensive equipment of the pros. How about makeup or more wardrobe options? The price is film is irrelevant when digital cameras have made shooting more significantly easier. 

In the age of social media, it’s much harder to take a mediocre photograph than a decent one. That’s why mugshots are such a remarkable achievement. They have stood still as technology marches forward, adding more and more pixels each year. Not in front of the gray walls. Depth of field was something Renaissance painters latched onto hundreds of years ago. Yet some still haven’t learned their lesson. 

This isn’t about guilt or innocence. It’s about giving the public something of aesthetic value. We deserve mugshots that could hang in a museum one day, not a bathroom wall. Remember, we brought a Hasselblad to the moon.